


Thinking Past Tomorrow

by Face_of_Poe



Series: The Conway Cabal [13]
Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Engagement, Family Dynamics, Family Feels, Fluff, M/M, Wedding Planning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-31
Updated: 2019-10-31
Packaged: 2021-01-15 16:22:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21256241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Face_of_Poe/pseuds/Face_of_Poe
Summary: “The clock is ticking now; s’only a matter of months until they’re stuck with me. Alexander Hamilton:son-in-law.”





	Thinking Past Tomorrow

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Halloween, have this... entirely not-Halloween-ish fic to celebrate! 
> 
> (Also, enjoy this complete and utter departure from the tone of the last fic, because Alexander does get to have nice things, too)

The whole thing was a setup. He should have seen it earlier. Their first visit to South Carolina since the summer’s engagement, and Alexander had the audacity to think Henry and Eleanor Laurens wouldn’t have something to say about it in person they didn’t want to communicate over the phone.

He should have recognized the buildup. Eleanor’s over-the-top breakfast, hot and waiting for them when they rolled out of bed after a late flight and midnight arrival. Henry’s gruff affection. Their not-at-all-subtle hints that Maggie should take Alexander with her to the store for some last minute things _in case there’s anything he forgot to pack_, and it was then that the suspicion started darkening John’s eyes.

The obviousness of it, in retrospect, was embarrassing, upon returning to the house and finding John shut away in the solarium with both of his parents, deep in what looked like a very intense discussion indeed.

The whole thing was a setup.

“You’re being dramatic,” John laughs, when Alexander finally has him alone in John’s childhood bedroom some hours later. “Honestly – nothing bad. It’ll make you _mad_,” he adds drily, “but nothing _bad_.”

Alexander scowls. “Pray tell.” John holds out his arms, and Alexander lets himself slump down onto the bed and into them. “Mmf.”

The hold tightens, and then John’s pulling them backwards to lie down, fully clothed and all. He presses his face into Alexander’s neck and murmurs, “I thought we were past this. Why the sudden suspicion?”

“I don’t know, I mean… maybe they’ve been holding out all this time waiting for you to realize you can do better and elope with some monied heir to the family fortune you met in med school.” John just blinks at him, slow and nonplussed, until Alexander turns and sees his expression, and shrugs apologetically. “The clock is ticking now; s’only a matter of months until they’re _stuck _with me. Alexander Hamilton: _son-in-law_.”

“The horror,” John deadpans. “Would you like to know what they _actually _wanted, or would you like to keep being ridiculous?”

“I honestly don’t see what I can’t choose both.”

John tugs him even closer with a soft huff of laughter. “You remember last week we asked them to look at their calendars so we can start figuring out a reception weekend?”

Alexander stiffens. “Yeah…” He cranes around again and catches the nervous smile as John tries to figure out how to phrase whatever he’s working up towards. “Don’t tell me. They want us to have it down here.”

“Well…no…”

“They want to pay for it.”

“Not exactly, but...”

“They want to -”

“_Alex_.” He stops and blinks. “They want to know if we’ll consider letting them put together a ceremony.”

“…Oh.” He gnaws his lip and shifts to stare up at the ceiling, brooding. “Did you point out that if we wanted a ceremony, we’d be putting one together ourselves?”

John’s breath tickles against his ear when he answers, “Would you know, I _did_?”

“And?”

“And they want to see their son get married,” John laughs softly against him. “I am not unsympathetic. And _they _are not unsympathetic of why we decided against, but they wanted to… make sure they understand. Those reasons. If it was simple convenience, or money, or something deeper.”

Alexander snorts. “Oh my God, they _did _offer to pay for it.”

“They’re traditional sorts, Alex, they offered to pay for everything.”

He starts to mentally tabulate the cost of a ceremony on top of the reception they’ve begun tentatively pricing already, gets tired quickly, and gives up. “Yeah, I don’t like that.”

“I said you wouldn’t.”

Because it’s money, and it’s convenience, and it _is _something deeper, but that something is hard to pinpoint and define. And no small part of it the expectations liable to go hand-in-hand with their respective connections, John’s family, the strange place they straddle on the cusp of being public figures without _wanting _to be.

“It’s okay if it’s a hard no,” John reassures him after a few minutes of contemplative silence. “They might be disappointed, but they get it. I think maybe they just wanted to be sure it wasn’t a… _religion _thing.” And Alexander actually turned back around at that, brows furrowed in confusion. “Because the church we went to growing up? Yeah, they don’t do, well…” John gestures crudely between them, and Alexander barks out a laugh despite himself. “_This_.”

_That_, of all the elements involved, had actually never factored into his thinking one bit. But it does set his mind turning tonight, even after they go back downstairs to rejoin the family for some coffee and dessert.

x---x

John wakes up the next morning to find Alexander already up and out of bed. He’d blame it on weird hospital hours, but the truth is that Alexander has always been a more fidgety sleeper than usual outside of wherever he happens to call _home _at the moment. He can already smell breakfast wafting up the stairs though, so he forgoes the shower in favor of getting some food before his mother wipes the kitchen clean ahead of Thanksgiving feast preparations.

And also, possibly, to save Alexander from his well-meaning mother who simply can’t understand people who profess to not eat breakfast.

There’s no sign of a struggle though as he descends the steps. The dining room is dark and empty, and he only hears the quiet pattering of one pair of feet moving about the kitchen, and the sound of something sizzling in a pan.

And then he rounds the corner, and gets a view of the solarium, and stops dead in his tracks. “What sorcery is this?”

His mother starts shoveling eggs and hash browns onto a fresh plate without missing a beat. “Eat up, Jacky, dinner’s not until three.” 

“But…what…?”

“Hm?” she looks up from the row of toast toppings and follows his gaze through the closed door of the solarium, where Alexander – still in his pajamas – seems to be having a lively conversation with John’s father, coffee mug in one hand and shoving a piece of French toast in his mouth with the other. “Oh. He said no syrup. Sometimes I just can’t understand that boy.” And then she starts pouring enough syrup over John’s plate to compensate.

“But he’s… _eating_. Breakfast. Is he under duress?” 

“He’s a growing boy.”

“Mom, he’s thirty.”

She smiles over her shoulder before dumping powdered sugar on top of the mess until he can’t quite tell where his French toast ends and where his hash browns begin. “Then maybe he’s reaching that age where running off of caffeine and obstinacy only gets you so far.”

“It’s like you’ve never even _met _Alex.”

She swats him with a dishtowel and sends him in with his mess – his delicious, delicious mess – of a plate to join his fiancé and his father for breakfast.

x---x

John should have known something was up when Alexander insisted on driving.

Alexander _hates _driving.

But he gets them to downtown Charleston with only a _couple _of missed exits and turns, and winds them through crowded street and only tries to turn the wrong one on a one-way _once_, until he eventually pulls them into a garage near the waterfront with a triumphant gleam in his eye.

And then he turns to John and says matter-of-factly: “So.”

“So…”

“Doctor Laurens. My love, my light, my shining star.”

“Sweet Jesus.”

“Cold in my professions, warm in my -” He pulls the car door open and gets one foot out before Alexander laughingly manages to yank him back in. “Way to ruin my proposal.”

With infinite patience, John pulls the door closed once more and informs him gently, “Darling, we’ve already done this part.”

“Yes, but it has been recently brought to my attention that a marriage license acquired in the state of South Carolina is valid in perpetuity.”

John stares at him for several silent seconds. “…What?”

“We can get a license here. Or, well,” Alexander cranes around and tries to orient himself in the parking garage, before pointing vaguely behind them in a decidedly northerly direction, “about three blocks west of here. And get married… _sometime _next year, once we’ve hammered out the details. None of this_ sixty days expiration _bullshit in New York.”

“But…”

“Oh.” Alexander’s enthusiasm deflates a little as he studies John’s baffled face. “Or… you really don’t want to do the whole ceremony thing.”

“I thought _you _didn’t want to do the whole ceremony thing!”

“Oh,” he repeats, mollified. “Well, your father and I are conducting some negotiations.”

“Gee, did you want to include me, or -”

“He has yielded to my immovable point on supplying the reverend -”

“_What?_”

“- and I have yielded to _his _immovable point on paying for the damn thing, provided we’re left to our own devices on reception plans back home.” John can’t even find any words, and mostly just questions his sanity at marrying a _lawyer_, for god’s sake. “So… whaddya say?”

A hundred various takes on _I’m confused_ and _huh? _and _of course _flit through his head, but all he can come up with is, “_You _know a reverend?”

“Wonders never cease.”

He hesitates, and adds his own caveat. “Nothing outside in the summer. That shit’s miserable.”

“Agreed.”

After Alexander’s reaction two nights ago, he worries that he feels pressured into it; but the excitement practically has him bouncing in his seat, and he _drove _here for Christ’s sake, so something must have gone right in his conversation with Henry. So… “Alexander Hamilton, will you marry me in South Carolina and then attend a party to celebrate in New York at some yet-to-be-determined time-and-place next year?”

“Goddammit, Laurens, this was _my _proposal.”

He winks, and leans over to plant a smacking kiss on Alexander’s cheek. “You got the first one. My turn.”

“Well, sharing is caring.”

“And, anyway,” he starts to pull open his door again because, hell, if they’re going to do it then they’re going to do it. “I guess it’ll be nice to have memories of more than just a courthouse. You’re a _lawyer_, courthouses are boring.”

“So your mother said,” Alexander returns drily.

“And, you know, if we ever have kids, they’ll want to see the pictures one day.”

Alexander goes completely still. “What?”

John just grins, wide, and steps out of the car. Alexander stops spluttering in time to rush after him and catch up at the stairwell.

**Author's Note:**

> Signing off this universe again at least for now. Hoping to tackle some non-fanfic for NaNoWriMo, wish me luck eeeeee.


End file.
